On a String

Chapter 16

"Bring me home in a blinding dream,
Through the secrets that I have seen,
Wash the sorrow from off my skin,
And show me how to be whole again.
'Cause I'm only a crack in this castle of glass,
Hardly anything there for you to see."

'Castle of Glass'by Linkin Park.

Kai cursed and his pale fingers clenched the paper in a tight chokehold. For a few heart-shaking seconds, Clarissa's bedroom faded in and out of focus and he dazedly reached out to the bedpost in an attempt to stay upright.

What did this mean? What did all of it mean? How did, - how did-?

The 'Puppet Master' had been there all along.

All along.

Something... something controlling... had been there the whole time. Lurking, like lies in a shadowy box; with bright, hungry eyes waiting to escape and breathe and infect everything with-

The room swam again, and he gave in ("Don't give in, Kai!") to the rising nausea by clumsily sinking onto Clarissa's bed.

(The bed of a ghost, he realised grimly. A coffin.)

They were playing in a haunted graveyard (a castle of glass), and it should have been expected that death would be crawling closer.

All along, all along...

The puppets.... Strings.

("They hung them,")

Nooses were tightening....

With those thoughts, his stomach churned and hazily, his distressed mind tried to make some sense of the complex (woven, threaded) problem they were now faced with. But try as he might, in his panic, the only answers that came were questions.

What did this all mean?

Why had the group hidden their leader from everyone?

Who was the leader?

Why had they planned this?

(Planned? Was it planned?)

Why had-

Deathpuppetsliescontrolallalong-

Why had-

Lieslieslies-painpainpain-death.

How could-

Ican'tbreatheIcan'tbreathe-help-help-help-

Kai choked for breath, his grip on the cold metal post tightening. Their fight had just gotten so much harder.

(So much more impossible.)

The familiar, suffocating feelings of pain and hopelessness and I'm on my own now returned and if he hadn't been so worried, Kai would have blinked tiredly and wished he could will away the pain.

But time was running out.

Nooses were tighte-

No.

Cole, noticing Kai's stricken expression, came to sit softly next to his friend on the bed. "What do we do now?" he asked, shifting and causing the springs to creak.

Kai jerked at the sound (coffins were supposed to be silent!), but his hands remained clutching the bedpost. "We need to get the information back to the others," he whispered, voice strained with silenced horror.

(Silenced like a bullet bursting forth from a pistol.

Like blood blossoming and swirling in rings around a lifeless heart.